Farmers' (local and colonists) perceptions of environmental changes in the forest frontier of the upper Amazon, Peru

Amazon ecosystem degradation profoundly impacts life supporting processes of global importance such as climate regulation, as well as local conditions for livelihoods. In Peru's highland jungle, an expanding deforestation front of forest conversion to agriculture has vastly transformed the landscape. Small–scale farming, the main driver of forest degradation, and consequently household natural resource management affect ecosystem functionality. To investigate farmers' attitudes and priorities to services provided by the ecosystems (ES) we interviewed 51 farmers, both local and colonists. They strongly agreed that over the last three decades, local conditions for livelihoods have deteriorated following forest degradation and climate change. The latter was reported the primary contributor to an impaired life quality and their greatest concern. Overall, local farmers perceived greater environmental change than did colonists who were also more positive towards intensive agriculture and forestry. This should be considered in environmental conservation efforts in the upper Amazon.

Related articles

The topic of climate change is not without its fair share of controversy, and while there are dozens of conflicting scientific and political perspectives at play, one positive that has emerged from the chaos is that the average global citizen is far more aware of the importance of sustainability and environmental responsibility than perhaps ever before. This has trickled into the realm of official policy making, as developed nations all over the world have begun to turn their attention towards diversifying their...

Every year, wildfires plague the nation. Once there’s an ignition source, dry foliage in country areas can quickly go up in flames, spreading through woodlands or grasslands quickly. While some wildfires can be small, others can be devastating and blaze through thousands of acres.While there’s no way to predict where wildfires may start, there are ways to minimize the damage of risk-prone areas. One great way to reduce wildfire hazards is biomass harvesting.In this blog, we’ll discuss wildfires,...

Location: Forest View
Customer: The Village of Forest View
Problem:
Originally Forest View had a combined sewer and stormwater system. As the area became popular development occurred which lead to more hard surface areas, which lead to higher runoff during rainy periods. This became such a problem that, in the 1960’s the sewer and stormwater system was split to ensure that high rainfall events didn’t overload the sewer system causing backflow into residential properties. The two split systems...

There has been significant discussion about the merits of stacking conservation payments over the past few years. A simple explanation for credit stacking is when landowners are paid for conservation practices on their property that provide multiple benefits to the environment. Examples of credits types that might be stacked include: endangered species, water quality, wetlands, and carbon. Environmental credit stacking will be an important factor for forestland owners to consider as they attempt to generate...

Modeling of hydrological time series is essential for sustainable development and management of lake water resources. This study aims to develop an efficient model for forecasting lake water level variations, exemplified by the Poyang Lake (China) case study. A random forests (RF) model was first applied and compared with artificial neural networks, support vector regression, and a linear model. Three scenarios were adopted to investigate the effect of time lag and previous water levels as model inputs for...

Customer comments

No comments were found for Farmers' (local and colonists) perceptions of environmental changes in the forest frontier of the upper Amazon, Peru. Be the first to comment!

Add your comment

Great! comment successfully added!

Contact

Your message:

Your email

Your first name

Your last name

I would like to receive periodic email updates and special offers from select suppliers.